Music & Entertainment Blog

No best blues guitarist lineup would be complete without a mention of Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954–90). Exploding on to a generally lethargic blues scene in 1983 with his Texas Flood album, Stevie Ray Vaughan administered a high-voltage charge that revitalized the blues with his stunning playing and imagination. 

This week brings a bonus blog to our series on top guitars. We couldn’t not include the Gibson L-5 and D’Angelico New Yorker, whose elegance, fine design and rich sound put them in a whole category of their own. So here they are, earning their place alongside our top 10.

The sad news of the death of Leonard Cohen has prompted many to mourn the loss of the folk rock icon, whose most recent album – You Want it Darker – was produced by his son Adam and released just a few weeks ago. Covering such topics as politics, religion and love, his unusual and intelligent songs have always possessed a strangely addictive, dwelling aura, the words threaded with subtle power and wrapped in an unconventional singing voice. The acclaimed Canadian songwriter's influence can be felt in the works of many other music stars, including the likes of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Philip Glass, Tom Waits, Rufus Wainwright and U2, and his most famous works – including Hallelujah (1984), Bird on the Wire (1969), Suzanne (1967) and So Long, Marianne (1967) – will no doubt continue to capture the imagination of their listeners. As tributes continue to pour in for the great poet and musician, we take a look back over the early life of this captivating figure, whose beautifully enigmatic songs betray his early days as a cult author and poet. 

A famously eccentric figure during the Modern era, Erik Satie (1866–1925) was a French composer, pianist and writer. His pieces are at once nostalgic and playful, simplistic and strange, and his own disposition was well-matched to his radical musical style. Sometimes described as ‘anti-emotional’ and ironic, Satie’s work was a response to and escape from German (in particular, Wagnerian and Romantic) models. He is also famous for the unique titles of his works (such as Genuine Limp Preludes (For a Dog)), and his bizarre performance directions (for example, instructions that a section be played ‘as dry as a cuckoo’), as well as his humorous miniatures for piano, where bar lines, time signatures and even keys were removed. Having once referred to himself as someone who ‘measures sounds’, Satie is often identifiable by his strange, unresolved chords; his most well-known works include the 'Gymnopédies’.

The MTV video music awards took place on 30^th August, and as usual there were all manner of outfits and personalities sparking excitable conversation on Twitter. What with One Direction's recent announcement about splitting up, there was already a flurry of interest in the music industry's most recent news, but how interested were the people in the music video awards? TV ratings would suggest not very, with an all-time low, so positive reports are choosing to focus on Twitter ratings instead, which by contrast rocketed: Nielsen reports that the VMAs this year was the most-tweeted non-sports program since 2011 (when Nielsen first began tracking Twitter TV activity). The 2014 awards generated 12.6 million tweets, which this year’s far surpassed with more than double that figure: US stats show 21.4 million tweets from users. As usual, the music videos seemed to take a backseat in the night’s affairs, with the drama all happening with the figures onstage. We'll do a quick run-down of the highlights of this year's awards.